


Friends in Low Places

by Vandalous



Series: Hello, T-R-O-U-B-L-E [2]
Category: EOS 10 (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9499013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vandalous/pseuds/Vandalous
Summary: There's something loose in engineering on EOS 10. Something fast. Something dangerous. Something... Stabby?





	

“We’re following the breadcrumbs to the candy house!” She paused, considered, and then continued. “If by ‘breadcrumbs’ you mean ‘stab marks’, and by ‘candy house’ you mean ‘knife-wielding roomba. Which I do.”

“Remind me why I’m doing this again?” Ryan sighed.

“You want to ‘find and contain it for the protection of the crew’.”

“And you want to steal it for-”

“Ryan, look out!” Jane yelped, jumping back against the wall. Ryan’s reflexes saved him as the little robot zoomed past them. It moved faster than any roomba had before as it zigzagged down the corridor, bouncing off the walls with a screech of metal on metal. 

“After him!” Jane yelled, dragging Ryan by his collar.

  
-

“Ah shit, where did it go? Did you see?” Ryan panted. Damn, that little robot was fast.

“Well,” Jane said. “It either went that way,” she pointed down the corridor. “Or it went that way,” she added, pointing at the air vent, which was mangled and hanging on by a single screw. 

There was a beat where they both squinted at the size of the air vent and then:

“I call dibs on the corridor!” Jane yelled and sprinted away.

“No fair!” Ryan called after her. “YOU’RE SMALLER THAN ME!”

“YOU SHOULD’VE CALLED DIBS THEN,” Jane’s laughing voice echoed back.

“God damn it,” Ryan muttered, yanking the grate free and crawling inside the vent.

-

The vents were cold, tight, and covered in scratches. 

“I am Hansel and Gretel following a trail of knife marks to the lair of the evil witch,” Ryan muttered to himself as he crawled. “I really hope there’s candy at the end of this, not just getting lightly stabbed by a vacuum cleaner.”

He crawled and slid, moving deeper and deeper into the station, following the whirring of the robot’s wheels, and the distant screech of metal on metal. 

Just when he was sure that he was going to die in here, Ryan came up against a grate. He was sure that it had been forced open by a roomba going dangerously fast. Ryan shoved it until he could squeeze through the gap. He stood up, looked around, and realised where he was. 

“Ah, shit,” he said into the abandoned cargo hold.

It was even colder in here than in the vents, and he had lost the trail of the damn roomba.

“Here roomba,” he hissed, trying to keep quiet. He wasn’t quite sure what Akmazian would do with an armed roomba, but it would end badly for Ryan. 

These things usually did.

He found a crate with a hole stabbed in it and decided that he was on the right track. A yellow-brown powder had spilt out of the hole in the crate labelled ‘MREs’. Ryan scooped up a handful of the powder, with the plan that he could at least try to lure it back here with a trail of something to clean. He walked around the crate and stopped dead.

The first time Ryan had been down here, it had been a hive of activity- people and contraband everywhere, and Akmazian in the middle of it all.

The last time Ryan had been down here it had been deserted, cleared out, only debris left to mark their passing.

It wasn’t deserted now. 

It was worse. 

Akmazian was sitting on the floor, leaning against another case of MREs, and flicking through files on a holomatrix. 

There was nothing else. Oh, sure, the Silent Storm was docked in there, but that wasn’t much better in terms of comfort. Jesus, Ryan thought. Was he sleeping in that tiny bunk every night?

Ryan’s chest hitched. His heart hurt. It was… Ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. Akmazian was fine. This was all just temporary for him. Besides, it wasn’t like Ryan cared. And even if he did, what was he going to do about it?

A sharp pain in his left ankle provided a distraction from his emotions, and he clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from giving himself away. He snatched the roomba up, holding it with the knife pointed well away from him. It’s wheels whirled, sounding sad and frustrated and, Jesus, Ryan really needed to sleep more if he was thinking things like that.

“Got you, you little bastard,” he hissed. “You are getting disarmed and sent back to engineering, you hear me?”

Ryan glanced once more over his shoulder at Akmazian. His heart twinged. Ryan squared his shoulders and quietly marched the roomba to the maintenance shaft.

  
-

“Nooooo, Ryan!” Jane cried, wrestling Ryan for control of the screwdriver. She won, and jabbed it at him. “You can’t do that! What will Stabby’s life be without the ability to stab? You can’t amputate his namesake, I won’t let you!”

Ryan spend three whole minutes trying to wrestle his screwdriver back from Jane. He failed.

“It’s not safe, Jane,” he said, slumping back on his chair.

“I don’t care. Look at his little wheels spinning, Ryan, how can you look at that and not care?”

“It’s a roomba, Jane. It’s a robotic vacuum cleaner with less AI than my light switch. It doesn’t have feelings!”

Jane gasped. “How can you say that where he can hear you? Don’t worry Stabby, I’ll protect you from the bad doctor.”

“You are not keeping him, Jane. No. That is an order.”

“I’m keeping him, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

“Did you miss the ‘direct order’ part of that sentence? Am I just screaming into the void here?”

“It’s possible. Come on Ryan,” Jane wheedled. “Just imagine Levi’s face when he takes his pants off and gets a surprise roomba attack! You know you want to see that.”

“Well, okay, that would be pretty fun- Wait, what am I saying? No!”

“Toooooo late,” Jane sang, snatching up the roomba and cradling it in her arms. “I promise to walk him and feed him and love him and only sic him on people who really annoy me.”

“Everyone annoys you.”

“But not all at the same time! Mostly. Besides, he’s kind of stupid. I don’t think he’s very good at being a vacuum cleaner. He won’t fit in with the other roombas at all. They’ll bully him, and you will be responsible for that. Do you really want that on your conscience?”

Ryan’s mind went straight to Akmazian sitting alone in that cold, dark place. He cursed his brain and sighed.

“You can keep him,” he said. “But first, there’s something I need your help with…”

  
TBC...

**Author's Note:**

> Wolf 359 are not allowed to have Stabby all to themselves. He's ours now.
> 
> Title is Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks


End file.
